A poem I keep coming back to. Szymborska takes apart the bureaucratic form of a “résumé” and shows how empty it is of the life it’s supposed to summarize — the gap between what you’re required to write and what actually happened.

The idea that stays with me: of everything a life contains, a résumé asks only for the parts that can be dated, titled, and filed — landscapes are replaced by addresses, and memories by dates.

That’s exactly the question I keep returning to on the cushion — what’s actually necessary, and what’s just a form to fill in.

The full poem (in Hebrew translation) can be read at levana.org.il ↗.